Croydon Area Remodelling Funding: Brighton Mainline

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Natasha Irons (Croydon East) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this important issue in the House. At this time on a Monday night, Members may not find the prospect of discussing the Croydon area remodelling scheme, or CARS, the most exciting way to spend their time, but I can assure them that it is. The scheme is not just about providing vital upgrades to two of busiest train stations in the country and bringing much-needed investment into one of London’s most significant areas of opportunity, but about supercharging growth, opportunity and transport links right across the south-east.

CARS is a Network Rail plan to add capacity and ease congestion on the most complex part of Britain’s rail network, and to improve services on one of the country’s most critical rail lines: the Brighton main line. The lack of capacity at East Croydon station and the complex series of junctions north of Croydon—the Selhurst triangle—mean that trains across the Brighton main line, including the Gatwick Express and those across the wider south-east network, have for many years been vulnerable to delays and cancellations.

At the time of developing those plans, Network Rail reported that service punctuality on the Brighton main line was the lowest of any major route, with the bottleneck at Croydon being one of the main causes. The Croydon opportunity area is earmarked for 14,500 new homes and 10,500 new jobs by 2041, there will be extensive housing delivery in the Brighton city region, between Horsham and Crawley, and along the south coast, and Gatwick is forecast to grow by 58% by 2047 even with only one runway, so the pressure on the Brighton main line is set only to increase.

However, the Croydon bottleneck means that there is no practical way of improving journey times, meeting passenger demand and opening up new destinations on the Brighton main line in the future, because the maximum number of trains that can be scheduled through East Croydon is 70 per hour. In 2019, the service was running at maximum capacity; it is now almost back to pre-pandemic levels, with 62 scheduled trains.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I look forward to hearing how Mr Shannon’s intervention relates to the Croydon area remodelling scheme and the Brighton main line.

[Jim Shannon]

The most important thing, Madam Deputy Speaker, is to congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. I spoke to her beforehand to try to help her in some small way. Does she agree that years of underspending on public transport have left railway and bus services drowning in repair work, and that if the Government wish to have a thriving public transport service outside London, local authorities must be given the funding to fix services—be they in Croydon or Newtownards—rather than having to shake a begging bowl for pennies, as they do now?